Free Republic

In 1913, Woodrow Wilson was the newly elected president. Wilson and his fellow progressives scorned the Constitution and the Declaration. They moved swiftly to replace the Founders' republic with a new regime. There is widespread agreement that Wilson did not always show good judgment – for example, in his blunders in international relations – but in the project of overturning the Founding, he and the movement he led selected their targets shrewdly. By the time he left office, the American republic was, as they say, history. The fundamentals of the new regime were in place, and the expansion of government...

A Plague Upon Us; the Niagara Falls Smallpox Epidemic of 1914 September 1, 2015 By Michelle Ann Kratts It must have seemed like the end of the world--the Apocalypse--when smallpox came to Niagara Falls, New York, in January of 1914. Luckily, the city pulled through...although it was quite a harrowing journey to the end. It wasn't exactly a topic I wanted to dive into after a refreshing vacation at Saranac Lake, but there it was on my desk: a dusty, decrepit scrapbook filled with tattered news clippings on one subject, smallpox. I try and imagine the person who cut these...

Exactly 110 years ago... 1913 - Nov 8: Sheikh Suleiman al-Taji al-Faouqi [سليمان التاجي] (1882-1858) pens a vile hate poem, combining old anti-Semitic stereotypes with Islamic motifs in the influential 'Falastin' [فلسطين] newspaper.Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples. (2021). Germany: Berghahn Books, p. 270. Mandel, N. J. (1976). The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I. United Kingdom: University of California Press, p. 175. Morris, B. (1999). Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. United Kingdom: Knopf, p. 65. Benny Morris, The War on History, ''Jewish Review of Books'', Apr 6, 2020. Gilbert, M. (2010). In Ishmael's House: A History...

There have been many details exposed over the last two years about how our government at all levels is not what we thought it was, and none of what we're hearing bodes well for this republic. Let's focus on one issue: the U.S. Senate. It's clearer than it has ever been that it's just a collection of elected officials, behaving as if they're independent actors with no restraint. It's as if they have no allegiance to anyone. The citizens of their respective states matter not, except once every six years, when they play the "how can I fool them again"...

Left-wing demonstrators and rioters have managed to achieve in a matter of weeks what courteous conservative thinkers failed to accomplish in a century: Knock Woodrow Wilson off his progressive pedestal. More than any other figure in American history, President Wilson embodied and popularized the 20th Century ideology known as Progressivism. Wilson’s eight years in the presidency created the template for the modern administrative state: a powerful executive branch, an oversized bureaucracy, the increased centralization of government, an unending demand for so-called legislative reforms, and multiplying federal agencies regulating more aspects of life. In a sense, the Wilson program of 1913...

[snip]But reforming an old, entrenched system had its price. The system pushed back with impeachment, prompting the elected chief executive to respond: “I impeach the criminal conspirators.” It may sound similar to the current Washington saga and House Democrats’ impeachment of President Donald Trump. But this was nearly a hundred years ago in 1913 in Albany, New York, where Gov. William Sulzer took on the Empire State’s version of the “swamp.” It was known as Tammany Hall.

Professor Valentina Zharkova’s recent paper ‘Oscillations of the Baseline of Solar Magnetic Field and Solar Irradiance on a Millennial Timescale’ has been accepted for publishing in Nature. It confirms a Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) from 2020 to 2055, as all four magnetic fields of the sun go out of phase, while also suggesting centuries of natural warming post-Minima. Zharkova’s team’s expanded ‘double dynamo’ calculations match-up almost perfectly with the timelines of past Grand Minimas: the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715), Wolf minimum (1300–1350), Oort minimum (1000–1050), Homer minimum (800–900 BC); as well as with the past Grand Maximas: the Medieval Warm Period...

Daily observations of the number of sunspots since 1 January 1900 according to Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC). The thin blue line indicates the daily sunspot number, while the dark blue line indicates the running annual average. The recent low sunspot activity is clearly reflected in the recent low values for the total solar irradiance. Data source: WDC-SILSO, Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels. Last day shown: 31 October 2019. Last diagram update: 1 November 2019. [Courtesy climate4you.com] *Deep solar minimum on the verge of an historic milestone* Overview The sun is currently in the midst of a deep solar...

“No taxation without representation!”That was a popular phrase during the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War. Colonists thought it was unfair to be taxed and subjected to English rule without consent.Today Washington DC hands down laws and taxes to every one of the 320 million people living in the United States.And just like under English rule, we are not represented in the federal government.Now I know what you’re thinking… we have the right to vote for our leaders.Our votes send Representatives, Senators, and the President to Washington DC. And they represent our interests in government. US Representatives are...

ZAMBOANGA, PHILIPPINES U.S. troops in the southern Philippines face the prospect of battle with descendants of the Muslim insurgents that brought U.S. General John "Black Jack" Pershing to the country more than a century ago. Before deploying to Basilan on the weekend, the Green Berets took seminars on the roots of Muslim rebellion in the poverty-wracked south as they brought Washington's war on terrorism to one of the most remote parts of the former U.S. colony. "It's an old war," said Datu Amil Jumaani, a Muslim professor who lectured the U.S. troops. Arab missionaries brought Islam to the Philippines in ...

Photo of my hometown of Hanover Michigan taken by my great grandfather in 1913.

The still-life watercolour was painted when Adolf Hitler was in his mid-twenties, and sold by his Jewish art dealer Samuel Morgenstern, who was later sent to the Lodz Ghetto... ...The Telegraph's art critic Alastair Smart says of the piece, "The work is of no intrinsic, artistic worth whatsoever. The only vague point of interest might be that, unlike the iffy watercolours of Vienna city we associate with Hitler the painter, this rarity is an iffy watercolour of a pitcher of azalias."... ...Hitler moved to Munich in 1913, having been unable to make a living as a painter. The Nazis later...

A message in a bottle that was thrown into the ocean in 1913 and recently found by a fisherman off the coast of Germany was returned to the sender's granddaughter. "It was very surprising," said Angela Erdmann, 62, to The Guardian. "A man stood in front of my door and told me he had post from my grandfather. He then told me that a message in a bottle was found and that the name that was on the card was that of my grandfather."

A fascinating collection of illustrations shows how America keenly observed Britain and Germany as the countries prepared for the first world war - long before the United States was drawn into battle. In 1913, before WWI even began, military scientists watched from across the Atlantic as the rival nations raced to build more efficient and effective weapons in a bid to control sea, sky and land. The images, published originally by the magazine Scientific American in 1913 and again on its website this week, mostly depict these weapons, though some of the drawings show mistaken assumptions about how a war...

Stravinsky's work caused a scandal in 1913 but has since been recognized as one of the 20th century's most important pieces. The audience, packed into the newly-opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to the point of standing room only, had neither seen nor heard anything like it. As the first few bars of the orchestral work The Rite of Spring – Le Sacre du Printemps – by the young, little-known Russian composer Igor Stravinsky sounded, there was a disturbance in the audience. It was, according to some of those present – who included Marcel Proust, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Maurice Ravel and...

Schizophrenia is no less schizophrenia if one of the voices happens to be talking sense. Hard schizophrenia is no less difficult if murderous insanity is linked up tight with weird, pathetic, and arbitary scruples. In fact, if such an arbitary pattern is applied long enough, one may detect a method in the madness. I am talking about our erratic public policy when it comes to protecting human life. Gosnell is a disgrace because he killed babies in this spot instead of the officially-approved that spot. As one observer noted, he is apparently being charged with murder because he enjoyed himself...

It is a matter of public record that the United States Senate is a terrible place where serious policy issues are ignored; routine votes are occasionally delayed over concerns about non-existent terrorist groups; and proverbial cans are proverbially kicked down the proverbial road of sadness, gridlock, and despair. What's less clear is why the Senate is such a congress of louts. Is it the endless pressure to raise money? The never-ending campaign? The fact that Americans hold lots of substantive disagreements on important things and are themselves—it's been said—somewhat dysfunctional? Actually, according to Georgia state Rep. Buzz Brockaway, the biggest...

On February 3rd, 1913, one of the two most historic events in US history took place: the ratification of the 16th amendment, which established Congress' right to impose a Federal income tax on Americans, and overturned Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution which explicitly prohibited a general income tax. The amendment was brief and to the point, and read as follows: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration." And with that, the US Federal Income...

The 1913 Income Tax In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. It was a fairly short amendment, as such things go, weighing in at a whopping 30 words. It reads as follows: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census of enumeration. It was a simple little thing, with rather large consequences for the republic. Prior to the income tax being instituted, the United States government managed to fund itself with various excise taxes, and...

Prior to 1913, there was no federal income tax. The states had rights and representation in Washington, D.C., there was no Federal Reserve Bank, and the federal government lived under the enumerated powers afforded within the U.S. Constitution. What a difference one year can make... ... Passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution would forever change life in America, and not for the better. ... Further, thanks to the 17th Amendment, also passed in 1913, the states no longer have representation in Washington, D.C. Once again, what seemed like a simple sentence and a good idea to some at...